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I Wish I'd Met Christ Before I Met Christians: Part 2

Why Can't Anybody Tell Us Anything? 

     
     I hope that you've read and meditated a bit on last weeks' blog post, the first in this series, 'Why Can't We Get Along In The Church?' After reading, I hope you really gave some thought to the idea that everybody isn't out to get you and sometimes the changes our pastors preach need to take place within us aren't just for others. I hope you gathered that some of them are for us. Introspection is so important for us, as believers, because so much of the Bible tells us that things must be removed from within us for God to live there. 
     Perhaps I should've talked about this last week, but here goes. Read Psalm 51, one of the psalms of repentance. It's pretty intense. David talks about confessing his sin to God and how the Father delights in the truth in our "inner being." (verse 6) Family, that comes from the cleansing David talks about in verse 7:

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

    That's all fine and good, being repentant, until God says "you're the one I'm trying to transform and make whole." When God says that to us, it tells us that we need to be transformed and are still incomplete and it hurts. It hurts, especially when we've convinced ourselves that our weekly church visits


     Think about the last time someone tried to give you some advice. Did you accept it, even for a moment and consider whether or not they might raise good, helpful points? Did you, instead, write them off as a 'hater' or a distraction? Isn't it ironic that people who claim the name and power of God would be so unwilling to listen? It's no wonder, though, since it's hard for us to listen to God when he speaks as well. 

**WARNING** If you're a person who just loves  them some 'hater' rhetoric, you might wanna clutch your pearls. This is not the place for that. Just a heads up. 😉

     How do we decide when to listen and when to ignore? How do we filter through what we hear? I know it's popular to say that if people don't agree with you then they're your enemy/obstacle/something else made up. 

NEVER ASSUME THAT EVERY CRITIC IS A HATER. NOT EVERYONE IS HATING ON YOU. SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. 

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